My pick: Either Need for Speed Most Wanted (2005) or Forza Horizon 1.
Edit: jeez some of you are old AF lol
I’ll throw my hat in for Re-Volt or however it’s spelt.
There was a post the other day about yet another remake of our fire the steam platform (search for RVGL maybe); I haven’t looked into that but back in the day of Voodoo graphics it was so friggin’ fun to play, but single player and 8-player LAN.
Super Mario Kart
Assetto Corsa with a wheel and VR headset might be the greatest GAMING experience of all time, not just racing.
Crqsh Team Racing. Second wrould go to Rollcage or Grip.
I want to say Kirby Air Ride, but I don’t know if the City Trial mode that I love it for should even count as a true racing game, it maybe deserves to be a genre of its own. The actual Air Ride race mode is just okay.
So if that doesn’t count, I’ll say F-Zero GX instead.
Supertuxkart
not a single mention of SEGA Rally or Power Drift? shameful!
Simpsons Hit 'N Run for GameCube
Flatout 2.
you get nos from damaging other racers and it has quite the soundtrack.
Diddy Kong Racing, even though Pipsy and Tiptup were inherently OP.
100% this, Crash Team Racing is a close 2nd place for me.
Mario Kart
But which one???
For racing: Double Dash
For battle: 64
My gut says 64, but 8 is pretty frig’n awesome
Sounds exactly like what I would say. I think it’s safe to say 8 is objectively better.
That could probably be its own post, people have pretty strong opinions on that haha.
Me personally I’ve always been partial to Mario Kart 64 (& I know lots of people hate on it). It has just the right balance of speed and driving mechanics that make it a good racing game. Later on remember playing the follow-up on the Gamecube (Mario Kart Double Dash) & I never really liked that one, it just feels kind of slow/sluggish compared to 64. Like it’s trying to be a racing game but it just runs too slow IMO.
People hate on MK 64??? Who are these philistines???
Double Dash
It’s gonna be hard to pick, because despite seeming like a pretty shallow genre, there are some pretty wild differences in gameplay. Arcade, Simcade, and Simulator all rely on different populations. People who enjoy Horizon are probably not lining up to play iRacing, and vice-versa.
In my opinion, I’d say one of the early Gran Turismo games, specifically 2 through 4. It was many people’s introduction to racing games and, at the time, was pretty cutting edge. That’s now changed with the Sim games, but there are plenty of Sim offerings now and it isn’t necessarily anything “groundbreaking” being released anymore.
I’m hesitant to agree with Horizon because I personally don’t enjoy it at all, but I understand the appeal of the first one, especially in a time where that concept was fairly new.
NFS:U2 Is also up there, due to the era. That was the epitome of late 90s/early 2000s car culture and had a large impact on the scene at the time, and just was a benchmark for the arcade side of stuff for a long time.
Horizon 1 was most wanted, legalized. Plus the best soundtrack of all time.
Star Wars Racer using two N64 controllers.
NFS Most Wanted (the OG, not that terrible remake)
The remake that was basically a sequel to Burnout Paradise? Agree to disagree.
I mean, OG MW is… suitable for ironic appreciation, but man, yeah, no.
In the objectively awful remake, when you find a car to add to your collection on the side of the road, you have to pay real money to get it. None of it feels like street racing, which is THE ENTIRE CONCEPT.
OG MW had the best soundtrack, best mechanics, a great story and no greedy monetization.
Wait, what? No, you don’t, you drive up to them, press Y and off you go. This is literally the first thing that happens in the game. Like, the very first thing they tell you in the tutorial is to do that.
I think eventually when they released a DLC pack they’d load in the DLC cars and events and those would tell you to buy the DLC if you didn’t have it, but that game has been all but given away in sales as a full edition for years now, so I don’t even remember the specifics. But yeah, no, they absolutely didn’t sell you individual cars on the side of the road. They don’t even sell them to you for in-game currency, you just find them.
MW 2012 certainly feels less like the UG games and closer to the old aspirational supercar games, which is fine by me, maybe because I’m older and I thought the proto-Fast & Furious stuff in the newer games was super cringey, but given the franchise started as a sports car magazine tie-in and remained pretty much that for a solid decade, I think “THE ENTIRE CONCEPT” is a stretch.
I genuinely think both of the MW games have somewhat wonky driving, for different reasons. You can get used to both, no question, but I will say that for how much of a learning curve the weird sense of weight in 2012 had, I ended up 100%-ing that game multiple times in a way I never felt the need to do with OG. That game has flow in a way only it and Paradise have ever nailed. The Horizon games come very close, but I tend to feel they are a bit too big to get you there. I like the small puzzle worlds in Paradise and MW2012 a lot.
Yeah, both games mw 12 and paradise bored me to death.
Well, there I can’t help. To each their own.
Pretty sure I’m with the consensus on this one, though. “Burnout Paradise is boring, actually” is a Carolina Reaper, lava-hot, coronal ejection-level take.
Not having real cars and all the races feeling the same kill the game.
rayman arena
